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Why Doesn’t $99 Buy Your Brand Longevity?

Experience Your Design ™

Experience Keylay

WHY DOESN’T $99 BUY YOUR BRAND LONGEVITY?

You’ve started a new business or are looking to give a facelift to your current brand. The first step is to contact a designer who can help you create the best look for your company. Many people tend to think that visually stunning designs can be whipped up in a jiff. With the added benefit of being served up as piping hot perfection for less than $99. Unfortunately, only part of this at times is true. Yes, just about anyone can create a “design” in less than an hour and for less than $99. Will it be beautiful or perfectly define your company? Probably not. Will it be something that you can be proud of? Most likely not. We’re not going to knock those designers whose hustle is to crank out designs by the ton for a minimal cost. Instead, we are going to guide you through the reasons why it pays in the long-term to invest in the overall branding of your company.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING

Good design and branding are more than a pretty picture. Developing an effective brand identity takes a lot of time and brainpower. With a strong brand, you are able to ensure that what is being shown to your target audience syncs up with the value and services that you offer. You might think of a brand identity as being the logo only. This is not the case though. Many people may not realize that the creation of a good brand encompasses more than a logo design.

Your brand is a combination of many things, which work together to display your company. This includes the logo, color palette, typography, messaging, etc. These elements work in unison and do not work as effectively alone.

Now it’s time to ask a serious question. Is it realistic to get a fully developed and realized brand for $99?

WHAT YOU NEED TO LOOK FOR IN A GOOD BRAND

When thinking about what makes good branding, there are a few facts that will remain constant. Changing trends and advancements in technology. As a result, your brand needs to maintain the fine balance between longevity and significance. In addition, it needs to be flexible enough to evolve with the times.

When a brand is well done, it will become recognizable and leave customers with a positive feeling about a company. How do you get to this point though? Who can help with this? Graphic designers or agencies who understand how your business operates and what it needs to best connect with consumers.

LOGO DESIGNS AND BRANDING ON THE CHEAP. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

For every designer who takes their client’s branding seriously, the amount of work that goes into developing a unique design is significant. From the initial conversations with the client to forming the best solution for their brand, there are several levels to creating designs that best represent the company. This includes:

  • – Conversations with the client to understand the company
  • – Research on the industry and target market
  • – Creation of concepts based on research and observations
  • – Edits and refinement of creative concepts
  • – Adjustments to the design based on client or consumer feedback

This is only a small list of what goes into crafting effective, relatable brand design. There are normally several iterations that are massaged and tweaked before the final result is shown to the masses.

WHY SHOULD I SPEND MORE THAN $99?

We understand. The budget might be a factor. Or maybe it’s the fact that you might not want to deal with everything it takes to create a good brand. For designers who are able to produce cheap logo designs in a short period of time, please realize that the quality will generally suffer. This is usually because the designer does not have a full grasp of what you as a client wants or needs to successfully build a complete identity. Professional designers know which questions to ask and visual approaches to take that help them hit the mark. They will work with you to strategically figure out what best represents your business.

Many companies will find that when they go the route of cheap design contests or inexpensive freelancer platforms there are often issues that impact the quality of the final product such as:

  • – Language barriers
  • – Communication breakdowns
  • – Lack of understanding for cultural or social differences in the market
  • – Poor design skills
  • – Copying of another designer’s work*

* It’s an unfortunate thing, but there are some less than reputable designers who will take another’s work and pass it off as their own.

NOT LIKING WHAT $99 Got You

When this happens, it’s disappointing and frankly makes you question how you got such a poor result. You may find that the work that you paid for needs to be trashed and redone. Many design agencies and freelancers have assisted clients who have gone through this very same thing. Luckily, they are able to then help guide them through the design process and get them a result that works. Again, this is an investment in your company and it deserves only the best, right?

INVESTING IN YOUR BRAND LONG TERM

You can find professional designers locally or elsewhere who specialize in everything from logos to web designs. While the costs for a logo design range from $5 (looking at you Fiverr) to well over $1000, it’s important to assess not only a designer’s skillset but also how well they understand your business.

To give you some perspective on how much is normally allocated towards a small business’s annual marketing budget, it hovers around 3 and 8% of the total revenue. For larger businesses and depending on the industry, this number jumps from 8% to over 20%. These numbers are a good indicator of how much one needs to invest to ensure that their marketing strategy is on point year after year.

When working with any designer, they have to be just as invested in the success of your business as you are. While they (usually) won’t be there to help you run the day to day operations a graphic designer will be the starting point to organizing how your brand is shown to the world.

CONCLUSION

We are not saying that you need to break the bank to produce a brilliant design. What we want to stress is the importance of not pinching pennies on something as important as your company’s marketing. When considering how long you want your business to be around, isn’t it worth it to spend more than $99 to increase your chances of achieving longevity?

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